Spaceship EarthWrap edges somewhat worn, UR corner lightly bumped. LR front corner creased. Pages clean. Binding tight.
Author: Ward, Barbara
A bound copy of English economist Barbara Ward's contribution to the George B. Pegram Lectures. It might have been written yesterday.
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In the last few decades, mankind has been overcome by the most fateful change in its entire history. Modern science and technology have created so close a network of communication, transport, economic interdependence – and potential nuclear destruction – that planet earth, on its journey through infinity, has acquired the intimacy, the fellowship, and the vulnerability of a spaceship.
In such a close community, there must be rules for survival. We have, in fact, quite a reasonable idea of what the rules might be since we live by them inside our own domestic society. We abandoned the "right" to settle our disputes by force and violence and hand them over to an impartial police force and to courts of law. And, increasingly, we expect the community to see to it – through the concept of "general welfare" – that misery, grievance, and injustice do not drive us to violence. Law and welfare underpin art domestic community. These, therefore, are what we have to seek in the world at large.
But today the differences and disproportion between various parts of our world community are so great that agreed policies of cooperation run into reefs of hostility and envy. The gaps in power, the gaps in wealth, the gaps in ideology which holds the nations apart also make up the abyss into which mankind can fall to annihilation. It is on these disproportion was that world policy has to concentrate – restoring a reasonable balance of power between continents, a reasonable balance of wealth between the planet's developed North and underdeveloped South, a reasonable balance of understanding and tolerance between the world's rival creeds.
Then, when the grocer inequalities have been remedied, there can be more hope of building the common institutions, policies, and beliefs which the crew of Spaceship Earth must acquire if they are to have any sure hope of survival. – the PrefaceBook Price: $8.00
